Taiwaneers

A huge step was taken last night in my Chinese abilities. I got out Emily’s beginner texbook from last year and, with a little help from my beautiful bride, taught myself how to write 我 (pronounced “wo”) which means I/me. Until now I have focused solely on listening and speaking and basically only knew how to write my Chinese name, 鄭明哲. Reading & writing Chinese has always seemed daunting to me but last night was incredibly fun. I think I’ll incorporate it into my studies from now on.

One weird thing that I’ve noticed lately is that whenever I read, listen, or even think about Scripture my mind wanders and its hard for me to concentrate. A part of me thinks its because I have too many things on my mind and need to properly decelerate. Another part of me feels like its an attack on my relationship with God from a third party. I can’t really tell but the mere fact that I think it might be an attack is strange because I don’t normally think of these things as being very spiritual warfare-esqe when they happen to me. For those of you who feel inclined please pray that I can focus on the Holy Scriptures.

For the past year and a half I’ve had classes every day with the same group of 43 students. As you can imagine our friendships have been deepening. Another prayer request would be that God uses these relationships for my classmates and I to ‘sharpen each other’ and ‘draw (each other) closer to Him.’

Today four of my classmates and I gave a culture presentation on the United States for one of our classes. Teachers love having us do these things even when the class has nothing to do with culture. I guess I can’t blame them though as many of them only teach one or two classes in the International College (IC). We’re used to being in a very diverse classroom every day but for them its still a novelty. Anyways I presented on the South. I used a very hammed-up southern accent and taught them how to say “ya’ll” and about grits, sweet tea, southern-style BBQ, and how the confederate flag is a symbol not only of racism but also of states’ rights. It was really fun and you’ve got to love fluff assignments.